Success Is not the Best End Game

Success is not the Best End Game

I wasn’t going to write this post.  Waking up this morning, my list of possible blog topics was taking me in a completely different direction.  But then I heard on NPR while driving to work that Anthony Bourdain died.  He took his own life.  What the heck is going on?  Why are we losing all our creatives?  Bourdain, Kate Spade, Avicii.  Sadly, that’s just recently.  The loss from both drugs and suicide is devastating.  And these are the people we know about.  The famous people.  Like the canary in the coal mine, I wonder if creatives, sensitive and unique, are just the beginning signs of something thoroughly wrong in society today.  Is it social media?  The screens?

It’s easy to understand when an individual riddled by failure and loss decides to make such a drastic decision.  Yet today, as many days, we mourn the passing of the ultra successful.  Striving toward the top of the mountain and overcoming unimaginable odds should be breathtaking.  Figuratively, not literally.

Yet here we are.  Standing on the cliff staring down the edge of the abyss.  The questions come fast and the answers are sparse.  For me,  I and becoming more and more convinced of one thing.

Success is not the best end game.

An Ode To Failure

I write often about failure.  Whether making poor decisions or using catchy terms like failing forward, there is a certain glamour afforded on this blog and in the financial independence community.  We like failure.  We feel comfortable with it.  In fact, we have turned it from a full stop phenomenon to one that implies motion.  Momentum.

The glory in failure is that it provides nowhere to go, but up.  Even if incrementally.  When stuck at the bottom of the pit, you can’t get any lower.  So you might as well flop and struggle.  You might as well give it the old college try.  The worst that can happen is that you will end in the exact same place that you started.

On the other hand, success, success is not the best end game.  Success carries much more risk and doubt.  Reaching towards it can be so much more empty.  One can only fall after attaining great heights.

So why do we do it?

The “Once I Have” Syndrome

There is no greater argument that success is not the best end game than the once I have syndrome.  Success no longer feels like winning once you arrive. We have all dreamed about what we can accomplish once we have a certain object, or skill, or title.  Yet, time and again, we find that the journey changes us.  Our brains are elastic enough to adapt to the reality of the once quested for prize, and we lose the newness of achievement almost immediately. It’s hedonic adaption in it’s most insidious form.

And success is the hedonism.

A commenter asked me what success means in regards to my blog.  When I started, my goals were clear.

I’ll be successful when I have a hundred page views a day.

*I’ll be successful when I get my first sponsor. *

Months later, I have far surpassed these goals and do I feel any closer to success?

Not really.

Doubling Down

A great quality for a young person at the beginning of their career or starting a new business venture.  After the sweet taste of success, what better way to skyrocket productivity than pushing even harder? But what happens when you are established and have already accomplished everything?  An individual then has two choices.  One must either double down or come to the conclusion that success is not the best end game.

I wonder if Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain were exhausted from continuously doubling down?

Final Thoughts

I think that the success/failure dichotomy is outdated.  Most of us live somewhere in the grey between.  We move the needle forward in increments.  While certainly failure can be a great motivator and catch phrase, I’m really starting to believe that our idea of success is detrimental.

We’ve lost many great people over the last few months. The famous ones, at least, are teaching us a lesson.  Success is not enough.

It has never been.